Thank you, Madam Chair, vice-chairs and committee members.
My name is Maya Roy and I'm the CEO of YWCA Canada.
We are the largest and oldest gender equity organization in Canada. We work with 300 communities across nine provinces and two territories, with 34 shelters on the ground and 2,000 units of affordable housing.
Regarding the impact of the pandemic, the previous witnesses spoke very well to the lack of transportation and lack of Internet access.
In our shelters we have seen demand increase anywhere between 20% to 40% across the country. We have also seen an increase in human trafficking and cases of sexual exploitation in communities such as Niagara, St. Catharines and Halifax. We've also seen a very troubling turn in rural, remote and northern communities. For example, with the lack of Internet access, we have seen abusers refuse access to data or phone to women and gender-diverse people in the pandemic. As previous witnesses have stated, being in lockdown with your abuser can potentially be a death sentence.
Another issue we've seen sometimes is the conflicting public health measures and messaging. For example, women fleeing violence in the Northwest Territories are asked to check with public health first before leaving an abusive relationship and they're asked to call a phone number. When our front-line staff connected with this particular phone number, the lack of trauma-informed response, the lack of training, meant that government officials didn't necessarily have the assessment skills to assist a woman to make a safety plan. We were quite concerned.
It's very important to have a gendered trauma-informed approach to public health messaging, especially as gender-based violence is on the rise across the country. The United Nations refers to this as a shadow pandemic.
It's also given us an opportunity as a feminist organization to start to innovate and test new solutions. For example, tech companies such as Uber stepped in to provide in-kind rides for essential workers as well as women leaving abusive relationships to get to the shelters. It's very important if we're not investing in public transportation across the country.
We also partnered with the humanitarian aid organization, GlobalMedic, and worked with them to use FedEx to send hand sanitizer to shelters in the Arctic. How can we possibly ask community members to physically distance or wash their hands regularly if over 60% of reserves do not have access to running water or potable water? We have seen Canadians step up and they're interested in working with us on solutions.
We also partnered with the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto to start to develop a framework around a feminist economic recovery.
I'd like to now turn it over to my colleague, Anjum Sultana. She is the co-author of “A Feminist Economic Recovery Plan for Canada”.
Thank you.